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Combat
Combat has multiple meanings in World of Warcraft: # The state where your character is considered actively fighting and prevents actions that can only be done out of combat, such as using food or drink, or changing any equipment other than weapons. # Anything having to do with fighting, especially physical combat with weapons and armor. # One of the Rogue talent trees. General Combat Tips Ready Attack Before In Range Sometimes you might want to right-click on a mob to attack it when it is out of range. Why? Because you can run toward it and your character will melee attack as soon as you get in range. This tactic gives you a slightly quicker attack than running close enough and then attacking. This tactic also helps against caster and other ranged mobs, since you can sometimes run up and get a hit in before they finish casting their first spell. Using A Ranged Weapon Also called pulling, try to use a ranged weapon or spell to begin combat with most creatures in the distance. This gives you an extra hit before melee combat begins. Be careful with this tactic against ranged caster mobs, since melee combat can have the advantage of interrupting or delaying spells where ranged attacks generally give the caster ample casting time to cast spells. An advanced tactic to use in combination with a range weapon or spell is to try and perpetually run away from your opponent in circles (making sure you don't aggro anything else of course) allowing yourself just enough time to get a hit off but proceed running. This is called kiting. If done properly the opponent may never lay a finger on you. Running Away Never eliminate the option of running away, if a battle starts going badly, when outside of an instance. Watch how much damage per hit an opponent does and when you get to about half health, you might want to think about running if you can't heal or won't kill the opponent before you die. Especially consider running, if you are fighting more than one opponent. Note that many humanoid mobs will flee themselves when they are at 20% of their normal health level. However, after a few seconds of wandering off, they will return to fight you. ; Good times to run: * Many mobs won't follow you into water (river, lake, sea or ocean), but beware of water mobs (Sharks or Threshers), amphibious mobs (such as crocolisks or murlocs), or humanoids that can swim. They will swim at your normal run speed, but you will swim at reduced speed. * Conversely, many water mobs won't follow you on land, but also beware of amphibious mobs. * Also beware of mobs that have a ranged attack. They can pelt you from afar with spells and the like if you're slowly swimming in water. Usually though, these types of mobs won't chase you very far. * Run to friendly guard NPCs, since they will sometimes aid you, and most likely there are no enemy mobs in such an area. * Run to player characters not fighting who are around or higher than the level of the mob. Sometimes they will help you out, but not always. * Even if you know you will die, it will frequently be helpful to consider where you will resurrect when you return to your corpse after you die. In many cases, you can die near a wall, and resurrect yourself on the other side of that wall to safety. ; Some things not to do when running: * Don't run where there are other mobs who you might aggro. * Don't run toward a hill or mountain or a valley that might lead to a dead end or require a lot of maneuvering to get around. * Don't run off a cliff that may kill you from the drop. ; Useful things anyone can do before you run or while running: * Drink a healing potion (or any equivalent) if you have it. * Yell for help in some way (/say, /yell, etc.). * Watch for and avoid obstacles like fences and walls; these will slow or stop a player without affecting a pursuing mob. * If you have enough health to take a few more hits from the mob, turn around (if that is necessary) and use a movement imparing effect or a stun effect on it, then proceed running. * Quickly strafing (sidestepping) left and right while running away will make it easier to escape mobs in pursuit. ; Some useful things to do before you run or while running, by class (not comprehensive and not including talents): * Druid ** Entangling Roots roots an opponent before you run. ** Rejuvenation or Lifebloom can be cast while running for slight healing. ** While in Bear Form, use Bash to stun an opponent before you run. ** Hibernate to sleep any beast or dragonkin opponents. ** In Cat Form, Dash can give you an extra boost of speed for a short period of time. ** Travel Form gives a smaller speed boost than Dash but lasts as long as you are in that form. ** Changing forms removes most immobilization effects and cancels Polymorph. * Hunter ** Send your pet on the opponent before or while you run. ** Aspect of the Cheetah allows you to run away faster, but watch out for the daze effect if hit. ** Scare Beast can get a beast opponent off your back, but may cause adds. ** Feign Death may work to figure a path for running away or to lose aggro entirely. ** Wing Clip before you start to run will cause the mob to run slower. ** Concussive Shot as you're running away will also cause the mob to run slower. ** Scatter Shot before you run to incapacitate the target for a short time. * Mage ** Frostbolt slows a single opponent before you run. (Tip: The level 1 spell has same effect in slowing but takes less time; the effect lasts less time, as well.) ** Cone of Cold slows multiple opponents in a cone in front of you. ** Polymorph works great before you run. Use on adds also, but be sure you continue to run, as the prior sheep will break when you sheep a new mob. ** Frost Nova roots multiple opponents before you run. ** Slow Fall allows you to run off cliffs that you otherwise might not. ** Frost Ward and Fire Ward absorb some frost and fire damage, in case a mob does that. ** Blink teleports you a few yards forward, a very useful ability for running away. (Beware blink may sometimes malfunction and cause you to be teleported backwards due to terrain issues. Learn the places you cannot use blink and avoid using it there.) * Paladin ** Divine Protection can be cast while running. This removes all undesirable effects on yourself, and blocks you from all damage for a given amount of time. This spell causes Forbearance and will not work if you have that debuff on you. ** Blessing of Protection can also be cast while running, but prevents only physical damage, and doesn't last as long, but can be cast on anyone in your party (including yourself). This spell also causes Forbearance, and will not work if your target (which is probably yourself) has that debuff. ** Hammer of Justice stuns a target before you run, or while running. ** Lay on Hands heals completely, but drains all mana. ** Blessing of Freedom makes you immune to all movement impairing effects aside from the generic slow effect that you will get from melee mobs. * Priest ** Power Word: Shield (damage absorb) and Renew (heal over time) can both be cast while running. ** Psychic Scream can get opponents off your back, but may cause adds. ** Fade sometimes works, but only in parties. ** Shackle Undead roots an undead opponent before you run. ** Also look at various racial spells for things to do. * Rogue ** Gouge incapacitates a target before you run. ** Evasion lets you get hit less. ** Sprint allows you to run faster away, one of the better things to do. ** Kick interrupts casting, to do before you run against a caster. ** Vanish allows you to enter stealth mode while in combat, instantly losing all aggro. It will break if a Damage over Time is active. ** Blind allows you to incapacitate an opponent for 10 seconds, which is good to do before you Vanish, run, bandage, etc. However, if you aren't an Herbalist, you'll have to buy Fadeleaf, the reagent required for Blind. Unfortunately, for this reason Fadeleaf costs quite a lot. * Shaman ** Earthbind Totem slows multiple opponents for when you run. ** Stoneclaw Totem distracts opponent(s) from you. ** Earth Shock interrupts casting, to do before you run against a caster. ** Frost Shock slows a single opponent before you run, but causes a high threat (aggro). ** Water Walking to run away on water (but be careful about taking damage). ** Ghost Wolf to give you a small but considerable run speed boost. * Warlock ** Send your pet on the opponent before or while you run. ** Use a Healthstone to heal yourself before you run. ** Curse of Weakness will make chasing mob do slightly less damage. ** Curse of Exhaustion will slow the enemy, and does not require that you face them. ** Fear can get an opponent off your back, but may cause adds. ** Deathcoil will make the enemy run only minimally, causing less chance of aggroing adds and also will heal you a little. ** Banish on an elemental or demon opponent before you run. ** Voidwalker Sacrifice will sacrifice your Voidwalker and give you a very powerful bubble shield. * Warrior ** Hamstring slows a single opponent before you run. ** Shield Bash interrupts casting, to do before you run against a caster. ** Disarm so your opponent does less damage (in theory). ** Intimidating Shout gets any extra opponents off your back briefly. ** Piercing Howl will slow all mobs around you, giving you a headstart. Physical Combat Some considerations follow on physical combat situations. Melee vs. Ranged Combat The choice between melee and ranged combat depends mostly on your class. Most classes have all their best abilities in one category. Some are lucky enough to have some abilities designed to help them switch to their preferred range, such as Wing Clip. Below are tactics for keeping your foe at your preferred range (especially when it is not theirs). Fighting With Two Weapons, using Off Hand Your total damage output when fighting with two weapons should be higher than fighting with one weapon and a shield, but roughly equal to fighting with a two-handed weapon. Off-hand weapon attacks deal 50% of the weapon's designated damage. Therefore, it's wise to always put the best "damage dealer" weapon in the main hand. Dual wielding also increases your base miss chance using the formula 80% × M + 20% where M is your miss chance when not dual-wielding. Your usual miss chance against an opponent of equal level is 5% which means the typical miss chance while dual-wielding is 24%. A Rogue with the dual-wield talent increases the off-hand weapon's damage from 50% up to 75%. A Fury-talented Warrior with the dual-wield talent increases the off-hand weapon's damage from 50% up to 62.5%. Dual wielding benefits (including against Two-Handed Weapons) Some Basic DPS Math: * Assume two 1H weapons, each delivering x''' DPS * Assume one 2H weapon with '''y DPS ; All classes capable of dual wielding without any applicable dual-wield specialization: 1.5'x' × (1 - 0.24) = 1.14'x' ; Warriors with top-rank dual-wield Specialization: 1.625'x' × (1 - 0.24) = 1.235'x' ; Shamans with top-rank dual-wield Specialization: 1.5'x' × (1 - 0.18) = 1.23'x' ; Rogues with top-rank dual-wield Specialization: 1.75'x' × (1 - 0.24 = 1.33'x' ; 2H weapon or 1H weapon + shield: y''' × (1 - 0.05) = 0.95y For weapons of equal level and quality, '''x will be approximately .76'y'. We know from these equations then, that: # Dual-wielding classes not dual-wield-talented have their DPS increased by 20% when wielding two weapons with the same DPS. (1.14 / 0.95 = 1.2) # Warriors with top-rank dual wield talent have their DPS increased by 30% when wielding two weapons with the same DPS. (1.235 / 0.95 = 1.3) # Two-hand or sword-and-board warriors have their DPS reduced by 5%, unless modified by talents and +hit gear. # Shamans with top-rank dual-wield talent have their DPS increased by 30% when wielding two weapons with the same DPS. (1.23 / 0.95 = 1.3) # Rogues with top-rank dual wield talent have their DPS increased by 40% when wielding two weapons with the same DPS. (1.33 / 0.95 = 1.4) In order to determine which weapon combination is superior, then we equate the two formulas: ;For non-dual wield specialization warriors: 0.95'y' = 1.14'x' ; Which then reduces to: y''' = 1.2'''x This tells us then that a two-handed sword must at least have about 20% more DPS than each of the two individual swords. This also means that dual wielding receives 1.2 times the damage bonus from attack power. This is because power affects both main- and off-hand. Thus with enough power, dual wielding will always be better than using a two-hander. Imagine having a 80 dps two-hander and two 10 dps swords. But you have 5600 attack power. Two-hand dps becomes (using above formula): 0.95 × + (5600 / 14) = 0.95 × 480 = 456 Dual-wield dps becomes: 1.14 × + 5600 / 14) = 467.4 The level 15 white one handed swords do more dps than the hardcore raid epic two-hander! This is of course a rather irrational example as it is impossible to attain 5600 power, but it illustrates that attack power scales better with dual wielding. ;For dual wield specialization warriors: 0.95'y' = 1.235'x' ;Which then reduces to: y''' = 1.3'''x This tells us then that a two-handed sword must at least have about 30% more DPS than the DPS of each of the two individual swords. And that the dual wielder receives 30% more bonus from attack power. ; Examples seen in weapons: Taking a look on Thottbot to see what 1H and 2H "green"-quality swords there are around lvl 30-35 will give us the Nobles Brand set of 1H swords (22.1 DPS, lvl 35) and the Frost Tiger Blade (28.8 DPS, lvl 35). The 2H blade's DPS is about 30% more than the 1H blade. Another example would be the 1H Jade Serpentblade (18.3 DPS, lvl 30) vs 2H Stonecutter at (23.9 DPS, lvl 30). The 2H blade's DPS here is again 30% more than the 1H blade. We can then conclude that unless you are a Fury Warrior with dual wield specialization, the better weapon choice to increase DPS is to use a two-handed blade. Even with dual wield specialization, a two-hand weapon is equal to two one-handed weapons of the same quality. However, the extra rage generation given by the tier 2 warrior talent Unbridled Wrath tips the balance in favor of dual wielding for fury warriors that take both talents. ; Dual-Wield benefit Conclusions * If your 2H weapon shows more than 20% (for non-dual wield builds) or 30% (for dual wield specialization builds) extra DPS than your 1H weapons, and you don't have Unbridled Wrath (for Warriors), you're better off using that. * keep in mind that you also receive 20% (or 30% for the spec builds) bonus to the DPS from attack power while dual wielding. It's up to you to decide if your attack power is high enough to bridge the quite probable gap with 2H DPS. * Basic dual wield gives a 20% DPS increase over using a one-hand weapon and shield. * It also gives you a 20% bonus to the DPS gained from attack power. * Warriors and Shamans with Dual-Wield Specialization get an additional 30% increase on their base DPS (or 10% on top of the basic dual-wield DPS without talents). * Rogues with Dual-Wield Specialization get an additional 40% increase on their base DPS (or 20% on top of the basic dual-wield DPS without talents). * These same percentages apply to the DPS bonus from attack power. = Magical Combat = Some considerations follow on magical combat situations. Take Resistances Into Account Don't forget that opponents of a much higher level than you have a fair chance of resisting any magical attacks, so don't always rely on initial crowd control, damage, or root/snare spells to set up a fight. Don't be unprepared if the target resists a spell or two. Also consider specific types of spells against targets that might have specific types of resistances. Magical cold or water mobs might have a frost resistance, for example. Think About Casting Time and Interruption The longer it takes to cast a spell, the more times you're going to get whacked (further delaying the spell) and the more likely it is that your opponent will be able to use a stun or other spell-interrupting skill on you. This is of particular importance in PVP since the other player has to react fast enough to interrupt you, and a faster spell gives them a smaller time to do that. General Combat Think About Aggro and Adds Using your favorite high-damage spell to pull a mob is not the best idea in the world. For one, it can make it very difficult for other players, such as warriors, to pull it off you (in the case of taunt resists, etc), increasing the likelihood that you will go down. Secondly, high-threat spells have a much higher chance of pulling other creatures around the mob, which can also be dangerous. In most cases, if you are a caster and you are pulling, you would be better off to use your wand, as even a crit from a wand is relatively low threat, whereas your frostbolt is not. If you are in combat and you have undesirable aggro (on a low-armor character, for example) you may want to follow one of the following courses of action. Which one you choose depends on a variety of factors, including the class that is tanking (paladin or warrior, or whatever else), the talent build of that player (specced for protection, or whatever), and his skill at maintaining aggro and the abilities at his disposal. If the tank's build (and skill) allows him to build aggro on multiple mobs that he is tanking, you may want to change targets to one of the other mobs he has aggro on, and then switch back perhaps after he has established good aggro on the one that began attacking you. If the tank's build (and skill) does not allow him to maintain good aggro on multiple mobs, you may want to just stop attacking for a while, or use an ability that you might have which reduces your aggro, and wait for a moment before commencing fire. What you definitely do not want to do is run away from the mob in an undisciplined manner. It would be best to run towards the tank, so that he can see that you have aggro. This of course may be unwise if the mob he is tanking deals damage in an area of effect. Keep Track Of Mana and Health Keeping an eye on your mana and health before and during battle can mean the difference between life and death. Make sure to glance at it often. Damage Avoidance Melee combat is resolved using a chart of possible results for each attack. The sequence of results is: auto-crit (a target not standing up is always critically hit, and this value is either 0% or 100% for each attack), miss, dodge, parry, glancing blow (players versus monsters only), block, critical hit, crushing blow (monsters versus players only), and finally a normal hit. If the percentage chances add up to more than 100% then latter results will not be performed at the expected % rate because the random roll used to get a result from the chart is from only 1 to 100. Ways of avoiding damage are miss, dodge, evade, parry, block, absorb, resist, immune, and reflect. There's also an hypothetical deflect outcome about which we need more informations. ; Miss : only applicable to physical damage. Any physical attack, assuming that both attacker and attacked are the same level and have no modifiers to their hit rate, has a 5% chance to miss. ; Dodge : only applicable to physical damage. Your chance to dodge is increased by agility and defense. ; Parry : only applicable to physical damage. Your chance to parry is increased by defense. Only certain classes are capable of learning how to parry attacks, and only attacks from your front may be parried. ; Evade : applicable to any type of damage, or even non-damaging debuff. A mob that is in a position where the game believes players are using an exploit to avoid being damaged will go into Evade mode at which point it is effectively immune to all attacks. ; Absorb : applicable to any type of damage. This is usually the result of having a buff such as Power Word: Shield, which absorbs a limited amount of damage before failing. Certain shields can only absorb certain kinds of damage, so read the description before wondering why you're still getting hurt. ; Resist : only applicable to magical damage. This is basically the magical version of a miss. Your chance to resist a spell or other effect is based on your resist of that element, as well as your level. You can also partially resist some spells, taking only 25%, 50%, or 75% of the normal damage. ; Immune : applicable to any type of damage. This is the result of a mob having a coded ability to be immune to certain attacks (i.e. Scorpid Sting does not work on most bosses) or a player using some skill or item to protect them from damage (i.e. a Paladin's Blessing of Protection). These are either permanent (mob immunity) or time-limited (Paladin blessing) and will not fail regardless of how much damage you throw at it. ; Reflect : applicable on non-AoE spells only. A Reflected spell will bounce back to its caster, acting as if it was cast on him. Generally a Reflect is caused by a buff such as improved mage's Frost Ward or Fire Ward, however certain mobs might have a set chance of reflecting spells of a given magic school. ; Deflect : it's an outcome which has been found by looking to GlobalStrings and CombatFeedback lua files, in Blizzard's UI (FrameXML), which might be added later by Blizzard to possible results for auto-attacks and physical abilities. Category:Game Terms Category:Gameplay Combat